UP Open University (UPOU) Chancellor Dr. Grace Javier Alfonso is the latest recipient of the Concepcion D. Dadufalza Award for Distinguished Achievement.

Dr. Alfonso, who is also a professor at the College of Mass Communication in UP Diliman, was chosen for her remarkable contribution as an academic leader, teacher and mentor.

It was under Dr. Alfonso’s leadership that the UPOU strengthened its position in the field of open and distance eLearning. She pursued institutional policies, organizational systems and infrastructure projects that allowed UPOU to be a truly open education learning institution. During her term, the Resource-based Course Package as an approach to online course development was intensified.

Dr. Alfonso sat in governing boards and technical panels and served as consultant in aid of legislation on various issues and strategic directions for the education sector.

She is likewise an accomplished visual artist who directed educational videos and films and wrote extensively about local films, television and Philippine culture.

The awarding ceremony will be held on 13 April 2015, 2:00 p.m., at the College of Mass Communication Auditorium. The highlight of the event is Dr. Alfonso’s lecture titled eLearning, eTeaching and eResearch Through Collaboration and Networking in the Digital Era.

The UP Board of Regents established the Award in 2000 in honor of a beloved former professor of the University, Professor Concepcion D. Dadufalza, on the occasion of her 50th year of teaching at the University of the Philippines. Funded by a graduate of the University who requests anonymity, the Award aims to honor individuals of distinction, to keep alive the selfless vision and values of Professor Dadufalza.

The Award is given to an outstanding individual who has excelled in his/her craft, or who has contributed significantly to important causes in society.

UP Vice President for Academic Affairs Giselle Concepcion, Associate Dean of college of Mass communication Danny Arao, Ms. Violeta Dadufalza, UP Univ. Secretary Lily de las Llagas, AVP Rhod Azanza Special Assistant to the President Odette Portus, UPOU Vice Chancellor Lumanta, Vice Chancellor Saludadez, Dean Bandalaria, Dean Buot and Dean Arinto and our other University of the Philippines System and Constituent University officials, colleagues, students and friends. I am excited with this award and humbled at the same time. Receiving the Professor Concepcion Dadufalza Award is really inspiring for us who stay in the university… Professor Dadufalza was the epitome of a dedicated teacher well loved, enjoyed and taken very seriously by her students. This is a great opportunity for me to share with you what we have been doing… and to listen to each other. For us academics this is what we do. It is important for us to make public what we are working on; our narratives, creative works and solutions to our problems, our studies and researches. We want to hear what fellow academics think about what we are working on because we respect peer review and we have this passion to improve on what we do in pursuit of new knowledge as we contribute to the growth of our disciplines. The idea of sharing and moving our thoughts is part of this true academic sharing and authentic cultural dialogue.

I think that this award is about my being able to do eLearning, eTeaching, and eResearch through Collaboration and Networking in the Digital Era but what I have done will not be possible without a whole community of academics who believe that it can happen and work for the enhancement of our academic environment. It can only happen in the University of the Philippines with the kind of scholarship and spirit of academic freedom alive in our university and in this digital times. I am a home grown academic so please allow me to share with you my growth in our University, which has so much to do with how I was able to integrate the many experiences, approaches, methodologies, pedagogies and how it has contributed to the ways I have approached teaching and learning, research, extension and administrative work. I have condensed in 5 slides my 38 years with our beloved university not counting my elementary and high school days also in UP. I am grateful to our University of the Philippines for allowing me to grow and for giving me the opportunity to imagine, explore, apply and create an enabling environment for us and our faculty and students strengthening our community of scholars.

Here’s a brief history of my academic life and bringing my art beyond academe… bringing my works into public spaces. I took Bachelors of Fine arts in CFA major in painting (we were only two students enrolled in painting everybody was enrolled in advertizing now called visual communication). I studied painting at a time when there was a strong questioning of doing art that stayed with mimetic approach of figurative works. Almost copying the masters work as criteria of good art was no longer the requisite. The highly gestalt and formalist approach was not as sacred as it used to be. There was a wave of strong theorizing and analyzing philosophies behind art movements.

After my BFA. I mounted solo exhibitions and joined numerous group exhibits and I was asked to lecture in the College of Fine Arts. I taught Visual perception and Chiaroscuro. Then I was offered to likewise lecture in the Institute of Mass Communication while I was lecturing in the College of Fine Arts. At IMC I taught visual communication photography and Film. Then IMC invited me go full time as I was pursuing my studies I was registered in a program called Master of Arts in Humanities also in UP after taking all the course work and did my thesis fulfilled all the requirements… I was surprised that my diploma said M.A. in Art History. I was the first graduate of this program. I realized there was a redefining of areas of studies and changes are inevitable. Things were still in transition then… the institution of Art Studies came into being. I realized that wanting to be with academe meant that I have to be a life long learner.

So it was necessary for me to practice my art and media as I continued to contribute to my discipline and to help engage different audiences in public discourse. I was producing and directing a weekly public affairs program that tackled national issues…”Nightline Manila”, a drama anthology – “Tangi Kong Pagibig”, “Tanglaw ng Buhay”, a docu-drama on livelihood, a broadcast workshop, a “Talent Center on Air”, focused on training of talents in performances and film production, and “O Sige”, a comedy, to capture young humor and for the youth to comment on things happening around them. I also produced the first mini series in the country, “Hawlang Krystal” and directed telecines for 3 stations as part of the pioneering group directing and producing films for television.

On top of my full time teaching, I enrolled in the newly offered Ph.D. in Communication of the College of Mass Communication with numerous courses under Philippine studies on top of my communication program’s course work enriching my research experiences. And eventually I graduated with the first batch of of PH.Ds in Communication… . As all these were happening I was also involved in defending the institutionalizing of the Film and Audiovisual communication program which became the fourth major of the College. I became the founding chair of the program. Being an academic meant TEACHING ,MENTORING, doing CREATIVE WORK RESEARCH EXTENSION / PUBLIC SERVICE and ADMINISTRATION…moreover as a film critic (being with Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, Gawad Urian) I was writing a column in Malaya called KULTURA POPULAR then SIGHT AND SOUNDS in Daily Tribune. I found myself shifting from one medium to another. Being a life long learner…I chose to leave one summer to take up two courses in New School for Social Research in New York. I enrolled in Hitchcock grounded on Auteur Theory and also took Culture Theory which was a sociology course introducing British Cultural Studies which was a popular area at that time, knowing it would certainly help in my teaching Film.

Eventually I moved to heading the Graduate program of CMC and it seems with my experiences in CMC and my media work, the UP administration thought it important that I be involved in the Distance education program of the university which eventually became the UP Open University and I became the Dean for the School of Distance Education in Diliman, and then the director of the UPOU Multimedia Center. I found myself and my colleagues, teaching, doing institution building, practicing collaboration and networking amongst the universities, institutions, private and government institutions and the communities of practice as well. At that time I was able to do the massive volume of work because there was no traffic and the institutions I was involved with were reachable in a matter of minutes. We all know that whether you are an artist or a scientist and an academic at the same time, you cannot confine your working hours to a regular daily 8 to 5 hours and MWF and TTH teaching schedules. It will always be beyond that. In fact you will have to look at your work space and time in a non linear way And all this time In all this work, i never stopped teaching and mentoring in film and communication.

As a teacher and researcher I am now developing a course that is an example of e-teaching e-learning and e-research…with collaborative and networking in the core of its discipline – the Art in ASEAN course ASEAN 222. This is the focus of this talk. We are all concerned with the concept of openness and the dramatic changes in recent years in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT brought eLearning in the center of higher education in our university and added new dimensions to openness. In a networked society where very fast exchanges of ideas exist, the internet is this unending trillion conversations making use of all media, We have print, we have radio and television all rolled into a medium that is multimedia – print, graphics, audio, and video, all different media, together with its own set of grammar and syntax giving openness this new excitement and synergy in these new dimensions of connectivity, interactivity, ubiquity framed in this automatic constructivist-participatory pedagogy of teaching and learning.

As a strong advocate of Open and Distance eLearning (ODeL) that maximizes the affordances of ICT and Web 2.O. ODeL draws from the philosophy of openness, inclusion, resource sharing, access and equity of open learning, learner-centeredness, flexibility, active learning of distance education, and interactivity, ubiquity, connectivity and constructivist view of e-learning. These affordances and features are infused with values that underpin the universitas – excellence, academic freedom, humanism, intellectual pluralism, democracy, and service to society. These ethos create the spirit of the university as we all recognize. Together, all these elements are embedded and facilitated by networked information and communication technologies and make up what I refer to as Open and Distance e-Learning (ODeL). The interweaving of these components can bring about social transformation

By producing learners who have the ability to seek new information from different sources, translate this information into applicable knowledge, and communicate this knowledge in various forms and situations, they should be able to work in different cultural contexts as well. ODeL with its affordances, can help us address the challenges of education in the 21st century. Through the years, many changes have been happening in moving our ideas on top of face to face sessions with our students and colleagues to be able to do our teaching, mentoring, research , extension and admin work. With the complex ICT management in the movement of ideas already situated, creative technology solutions are being applied in diverse areas. Today in the we have identified that our learning and teaching will have to be learner centered, flexible, distributed, collaborative, integrative and for our learners to be innovative, creative and have critical thinking and be able to find solutions to problems and translate researches and studies into various media that will be more accessible to end users. in this digital era, this usual complex collaboration and networking in the practice of our mandate as a community of scholars is made possible with more ease and satisfaction despite traffic concerns.

This multimedia digital era not only calls for knowledge of different literacies but what is more exciting is you have this multimedia that captures orality, the exchange of ideas verbally and you have moments of quietly contemplating in modes of visuality. We have put our university in a whole new world of teaching and learning. The course is propelled by a completely online teaching and learning environment which positions academic texts in hard print into hypertext, visual texts as hypermedia and audio and moving images as hyper-multimedia/rich-media. Online teaching and learning is meant to enhance the learning experiences of our students and to reach more Filipinos in our country and abroad and for all those who want to access it.

The widening of the virtual teaching and learning culture world wide has ushered in the changing learning styles of our Filipino students. Each year, more and more digital natives are joining the higher education sector. Even digital migrants like us are constantly being put in a position where we have to adapt to a new technology. Challenging us faculty and learners to develop other media literacies and deep realization that teachers and learners are co-creators of academic texts through research and praxis pushes new knowledge for the growth of our disciplines and commuities of practice.At the right part of the screen is a listing of the courses I teach online These are the courses I teach using ODeL. But I shall focus on ASEAN 222: Art in ASEAN because it maximizes ODeL and Collaboration and Networking in the digital environment.

Our course materials are designed using the resource-based course package approach. All interactions between and among faculty tutors and students take place in a Moodle-powered learning management system (LMS) called Myportal. As you know, this LMS has features for online forums, chats, videoconferencing, blogs, and other communication tools. The ASEAN 222 course is designed as such. In Units 1 and 3 the students will be asked to read chapters from e-books, e-journal articles and video lectures both accessible from the e-library or the Web and/or produced by the UPOU Multimedia Center

Unit I: Introduction to ASEAN Art

Module 1: Art as Identity

Module 2: Reading the Arts

Unit III: Researching ASEAN Art

Module 13: Art as Epistemological Lens

Module 14: Art Research Methods

I also see the value in teaching art in a cultural critical perspective – Grounding research, teaching and learning approach in a multidisciplinary platform, making use of interpretive areas of sociology, anthropology, media studies and art studies in making sense and meanings of art, artworks and artifacts and artists. It situates art in everyday life and art in public spaces are integrated in the developing, designing and producing Art in ASEAN Course as part of the Master of ASEAN Studies in UPOU. Here we see the collaboration and networking in the production of course materials as our colleagues in the different ASEAN Open Universities extend their time and resources as we do our documentaries that capture the beat of their artists, artworks, art forms, art traders and art scholars.

Artworks are products of cultures, ways of life of different people with shared meanings in facing their challenges and potentials creating the identities of nations. Talking about art and culture necessarily means talking about our nations. The aspects that have the strongest influence in the art and artworks are the government’s cultural directions, religion, art trade, art education, and the artists as they see themselves as artisans, crafts people or empowered artists. The framework used in the course design, the development and production, and sample course activities foregrounds “multimedia” as research. The course captures the visuality of the artworks and the orality of the artists and other major participants in the processes that contributes in the creation of the arts and reflects the cultures of ASEAN nations.

The ODeL framework allows me to configure my course in expanding the various ways of making ideas move dynamically. With this view that the Internet is able to carry trillions of conversations, dialogue, voices, images and movement synchronously and asynchronously enabling the use of Web 2.0 platform,

2. Have an enriched understanding of monuments, architecture, murals, performances and sculpture as public art;

3. Understand some of the major Religion’s and belief systems strengthening the arts of the ASEAN region;

4. Consider the effects of World Trade, Colonial experiences, Popular Culture, Museums, Gallery distribution and the ideas of national pastime and entertainment in the formation of national traditions of art; and

5. Practice critical thinking in the study of the arts

Our history and past experiences as a people brought us into divergent cultures.

Factors that determine diversities in the Art in ASEAN framework

Our Multiracial and multilingual roots

Diversity in our Government’s view of how much The Arts is essential for economic, political, social and cultural development.

Our varied Religions and belief systems as it dominates ways of life and everyday realities affecting the art forms and the philosophies behind them.

• Education systems as it varies giving importance and or marginalization of the Art and Culture as major disciplines in the region

Post colonial experiences in a national scale and the past and present resistance and the decolonization processes

• academics/researchers varying commitment to Art and Culture as major disciplines in the region

To be more specific…This is part of my course in our LMS my portal. I consider my classes as research classes as well and this contributes in ushering of new knowledge in our discipline. I have posted on this slide how the multimedia materials are presented in the course site and you can just click on it and the learner/ participant can right away access the material anywhere and at anytime. I facilitate the maximum exchange of ideas among learners through online forums. Students submit their papers and multimedia requirements online and conduct and disseminate their research using multimedia approaches and formats. I do feedback and give both qualitative and numerical assessment.

Learner-content-teacher community of practice interactions happen online andFor learner –learner interaction we do it in the online forums, chat, videoconferencing but we go beyond this… the course guide and resources listings, there are questions in online forums to expound on the concepts in their own contexts. Students are encouraged to post their ideas and react to each other’s postings to promote Learner-content interaction. Content is delivered to students through technology, through view video lectures, read online academic articles from the community of practice and journal articles; the videos by resource persons who are the experts in the field; together with the videos of our artists and art scholars – that are produced by UPOU’s Multimedia Center.

To promote learner-teacher interaction I guide students to produce videos to document and to creative work grounded on authentic beat of their own communities in socio-political-economic context in which these stories are situated and mandate my students to produce only original texts and elicit reflective thinking from them. I have produced video lectures of my own that are accessible at the UPOU Networks, After their submission, I provide numerical as well as descriptive assessment of the students’ work.

For learner-community of practice interaction, aside from being immersed in their communities when they do their video research, they are encouraged to enter their works in the platforms Vimeo and You tube, digital video exhibitions, festivals, and competitions. UPOU organizes exhibitions and competitions every year for its students to elevate the discourse in public spaces.

It is most important that I capture the authentic voices of the artists, art critics, cultural sociologist and anthropologists, art curators, art traders, art patrons, national and local cultural officials and the other stakeholders in art and culture. This automatically reproduces academic texts orally and visually putting forth the importance of developing and strengthening other forms of literacies. The use of written words alone may not be doing justice to the need for authenticity and the capturing of the true beat of the art and culture of each nation and the uniqueness and diversity of our cultures and identities. Our region’s respect for our diversity of cultures is our richness and our strength as ASEAN.

These are the areas where we can produce video materials of original text where hopefully the academics of the different universities in ASEAN continue to collaborate in producing original texts from their perspective and using their own cultural lenses. Our students too, since teachers and students are co-creators of academic texts as well. These are the topics identified but I am sure there may be changes as I do the productions.

Unit II: Art in the ASEAN Region

Module 3: Brunei

the Kris: Gilded Icons of Power

Jong Sarat-Gold and Silver-Threaded Textiles: Glitter in

Everyday Wear

Pandan Baskets and Gongs: Sustainable and Organic

Medium

Folk, Kedayan and Malay: Music and Dance in Rituals

Module 4: Cambodia

Ankor Wat, The Hindu Temple dedicated to Vishnu: a

Testimony to a Glorious Past and Wars of Governments

Sculptures of AngKor Thom: Narratives on Stone

Khmer Traditional Music and Dance: On Preserving a

Cultural Heritage

Module 5: Indonesia

Batik: Art as a Way of Life

Non-Figurative Visual Tradition: Islam’s Legacy

Theater and Dance Narratives: Bali and the Hindu Tradition

Burubudur of Central Java: Vestiges of Buddhist and Hindu

Kingdoms

Pencak Silat: the Art of Resistance

Module 6: Lao

Epic poems of the early life of Siddhartha Gautama

Buddha:

Strengthening of Oral Tradition

Khene Music: Winds of the Bamboo Pipes

Lamvong: The National Dance

Module 7: Malaysia

Mak Yong and Gamelan: Traditional Drama in Music,

Song and Dance

Bunga Malai: Garland Making in Festive Celebration

Module 8: Myanmar

Mural Painting Tradition: The visual narratives

Parabeik Painting: Images on Parchment

“Pantamot” art of making stone sculptures: Buddha Images

Module 9: Philippines

Churches and Paete-Betis Sculpture: Dominance of

Catholicism

Tinalak, Ifugao, and Abel Weaving: Survival of a Tradition

Basket and “Banig” Weaving: A creative form in the Islands

Festivals and Dance: Art of the Streets

Fine Arts Tradition, Contemporary Visual Arts and the

Gallery Systems: Education and Market Forces

New Digital Media Cultural forms: Embracing the

Independent Spirit

Module 10: Singapore

Art in the World Market

High Rise Architecture: Art as a Socio-Political Dictate

Module 11: Thailand

Thai Temples: The Indian Hindu and Thai Buddhist

Traditions

The Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha: Anointing Royalty

Thai Dance: Roots of Entertainment in the Royal Courts

Bronze, Stucco, Wood and Stone Sculpture: Serenity in the Images of Buddha

SangKhalok Pottery: Sukhothai Style in Everyday Form

Thai silk of Khorat Plateau: the Silk Trade

Module 12: Vietnam

Lacquer Paintings and Wares: A Popular Art Form

Wood Cut Printing: Recording History

Cai luong and Hat Cheo: Theater Traditions of Vietnam

Water Puppetry: A Distinct Art Form

The A part of the course ASEAN 222 will be offered as a short course…it will be offered at the same time as a MOOC. My students will still be learning, responding and submitting requirements in Myportal but I will require my students to also enter the MOOC version so they can collaborate with a larger community of learners/researchers . The A part of the course ASEAN 222 will be offered as a short course…it will be offered at the same time as a MOOC. My students will still be learning, responding and submitting requirements in Myportal but I will require my students to also enter the MOOC version so they can collaborate with a larger community of learners/researchers and as co-creators of academic texts in this course. ASEAN 222 is the sixth MOOC to be offered by the UPOU. MOOCs had been around since 2008 when George Siemens coined the word to describe the course Connectivism and Connective Knowledge which he offered together with Stephen Downes. This course has been widely regarded as the first ever true MOOC (Times Higher Education, n.d.).

It was in 2012 that the number of universities, professors, and learners who became part of this teaching and learning environment became significantly noticeable to the extent that many even regarded it as a disruption to the conventional mode of education. Because of this phenomenon, some publications declared 2012 as the Year of the MOOC .

UPOU came up with its own version of MOOCs, and started offering courses under this framework in 2013. Drawing from its more than 10 years of experience of implementing degree and non-degree programs in the distance elearning mode; and doing research on this mode of instructional delivery; applying the quality assurance framework that UPOU is using for its programs and courses; and consulting the academic staff in a crowd sourcing-like activity which we dubbed as MOOCathon, we came up with our MOOC framework which we call MODeL or Massive Open Distance eLearning. Through MODeL, UPOU has attempted to address the issues and challenges faced by the MOOCs in its current form.

At this point let me show you some very short excerpts of the original multimedia texts we have produced for our ASEAN 222 course. Technical director can you put the material on? ******There is a saying that to teach and learn art is to experience art. In the design of the activities, assessment and evaluation – the addition to new knowledge in the field of study, the theorizing is seen in the selection of footage and its putting together of footage that sets the viewers thinking and interpreting additional insights and interpretations that go beyond cliché’s and mainstream interpretations strengthened by synthesis or reflection papers. This pushes viewers, the student , the teacher and those who will eventually see and understand the multimedia use to immerse in the arts and engage in critical thinking through making accessible via multimedia the images, conversations, interpretations by those who are participants of the Arts in the ASEAN being studied.

Course Requirements:

1. Forum Participation – 15%

2. Synthesis Papers and Reflection Papers – 25%

3. Fieldwork Research and video Documentation – 40%

4. Exhibition and Critique – 20% the students are asked to review and rate their top ten video documentary choices and share their reasons why it is important that their peers view these works.

Art in our region is as alive as the search for our identities as nations in proximity. We see our cultural diversity as our strength and richness as a region. As we rigorously study and articulate our areas of strengths and challenges as a people we are to find our dynamic discursive spaces, foregrounding intersecting spaces on multi-textual levels of complexities ushering shared meanings that will eventually be defined, articulated and theorized.

We are most concerned with the way the Filipino arts, artworks, artists, art scholars, researchers and teachers are presented and represented in the digital platform. And in general it is important that we learn to move our ideas, our narratives, experiments, researches with the end in mind that our people in our country and in the rest of the world can benefit from them. And ultimately can contribute to social transformation.

Despite these efforts, the University is aware that there are still some issues and challenges in Open and Distance eLearning that we must address as an academic community.

• More empirical and socio-cultural-critical research work on the co-creation of knowledge and pedagogical practices in the context of Art and Culture.

Encourage faculty members to publish their Art and Culture researches in peer reviewed journals and on top of that encourage academics to disseminate their work in social media and for universities to recognize these efforts as part of the universities’ extension function.

Use multimedia not only as an object of study but also as a methodological approach and a means to disseminate our research findings beyond academic circles.

• Putting the face and capturing the beat of Art and Culture in the ASEAN region for the global movement of ideas

• Collaboration and Networking in Research, Teaching and learning in the digital age

• Redefining/ repositioning research, teaching and learning- its medium, content and context of Art and Culture discourse in the region,

We have to Collaborate and Network more in these changing times. . What is good news is that today, as academics we are all encouraged to make our courses more technologically enhanced for both open and distance Learning and residential higher education institutions with the new law passed called Open and Distance Learning Act. UP Open University was named and designated to take care of helping with the crafting of the Policies guidelines and standards of Open and Distance Learning in the country and the needed projects and programs for all higher education institutions in the country who would like to integrate it in their conduct of teaching, learning, research and extension work. We are to take part in a very important role here…in open and distance eLearning for social transformation.

The most exciting part is still to come…I can see the GE program as a possible area for collaboration and networking among academics of the different CUs working together in conceptualizing, producing and offering the different GE courses system wide. This can be the opportunity that UP faculty can truly share resources freely to work on the ten top courses identified in our GE mini conferences and discussed…agreed upon in the system wide GE conference. This means… that my dear colleagues… we have to once again rise to the challenge and maximize this opportunity to work together…to imagine….to explore and apply new media technologies that will work and contribute to our disciplines and create the enhanced environment of eTeaching, eLearning, eResearch in this digital age. The only way to do this…is doing it together. I know that this precious award the Professor Dadufalza award is really meant for you…for all those who believe in ICT and the power of communication through learner centered, flexible, distributed, collaborative Open and Distance eLearning in this digital times.